


Fire and Ice

by YouKnowNothinJonSno



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, POV Switches, Slow Build, cannon except for the relationship, each chapter is one school year
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-15 03:18:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7204580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouKnowNothinJonSno/pseuds/YouKnowNothinJonSno
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny and Draco are opposites, but maybe that's just what they need to survive as they grow up in the same school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Ice

The first time Ginny meets Draco Malfoy is at a bookshop in Diagon Alley. The prat is sneering at them all, especially Harry, and unlike with Harry who makes her tongue-tied, snapping back at Draco is as easy as breathing. She snarls at him to leave Harry alone, partially because yes, she does have a crush on Harry, but also because there’s nothing she wants to do more than wipe that smirk off the blonde’s face.

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco knows from the moment he sees Ginny Weasley that she’s going to cause him more grief than anyone he’s ever met, Potter included. Even a year younger than himself, she matches him glare for glare, and it nearly intimidates him enough to make him back down. But _a Malfoy never backs down_ , so he just continues sneering at the little girl with blazing red hair and even more blazing blue eyes.

◊ ◊ ◊

Her first time on the Hogwarts Express is as magical as her brothers said it would be, and she’s hypnotized by the beautiful landscape rushing by outside the window. She sits in a compartment with Hermione Granger, her brother Ron’s friend, who is very friendly but won’t stop lecturing her about all the books she should buy, not seeming to take into account that Ginny’s family can’t afford to buy extra books. But she also explains exactly how the sorting ceremony goes, which sounds a lot less frightening than her brothers led her believe. When the candy trolley comes by, Ginny takes out the sickle her mum gave her and buys a pumpkin pastie, which she shares with Hermione. It’s sugary and filling, and even though she feels anxious about her first year at Hogwarts, the treat puts a smile on her face.

It’s about half an hour before Ginny gets truly annoyed that her brother Ron, who is supposed to be looking out for her, is nowhere to be seen, and she decides to search the train for him. Hermione says she will help look, a worried expression on her face, and they—thankfully—part ways so that Ginny can search in peace. She pokes her head into several compartments of Gryffindors, asking about Ron and also Harry, because more people pay attention to where Harry is than her brother, but no one has seen them, even back at the station.

After skipping the compartment with her brothers Fred and George, because they seem to be playing with a large rat-like creature that has spikes on its back, she starts venturing into the Hufflepuff’s section of the train. They’re all friendly and unhelpful, and Ginny realizes that even though she feels like she’s a Gryffindor already, she doesn’t have the uniform to prove it, and she could potentially be in any of the Houses she’s passing. The thought sends a shiver through her, because being in a new school without the comfort of her brothers and her new friend Hermione in the same House as her is a terrifying prospect.

Without realizing it, she seems to have passed into the Slytherin section of the train, and she pauses, about to turn back—no one here would help her anyway—but then she remembers that Malfoy git and the way he’d taunted Harry and wonders if he couldn’t be the reason behind their absence after all.

◊ ◊ ◊

He watches Vince and Greg fighting over the last licorice wand with a vague interest, silently placing his bets on Greg. Draco lounges lazily on one full side of the compartment bench, while Greg and Vince wrestle on the opposite side. Pansy Parkinson tried to join them in their compartment today, dragging Millicent Bulstrode behind her as evidence that she could recruit burly friends too, but Millicent shrugged her off irritably and Draco’s sneer still scared Pansy away. He dreads the day when she grows immune to his disgust.

As Draco predicted, Greg manages to snatch the licorice wand away from Vince and stuffs it in his mouth triumphantly. Draco rolls his eyes, vowing to buy an even amount of candy for them next time. Perhaps the whole trolley, and see how the rest of the train likes it. Draco glares out the window, recalling the fiasco of last year, when Harry-bloody-Potter decided to do just that and Vince and Greg were inconsolably grumpy. They’d only become reasonable again once the feast began in the Great Hall; Draco had never seen two human beings stuff that much food down their throats before.

The door of their compartment slides open but Draco doesn’t want to face Pansy again so he just continues looking out the window, hoping she’ll lose her nerve and go away. It isn’t until he hears the angry accusations directed at him that he swivels around in confusion to see the fiery little Weaselette from the bookstore pointing her wand at him as if she knows how to use it.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny Weasley is furious the moment she enters Draco Malfoy’s compartment. She skipped all the other ones, just glancing into the windows until she found the boy she was looking for. The blonde prat doesn’t even turn to see who it is, just stares out the window, leisurely draped against the seats. He’s taken up an entire bench, leaving his two hefty friends to squeeze together on the other side, and if that isn’t the most selfish thing she’s ever seen she doesn’t know what is. On instinct, she raises her new wand, and she doesn’t know where this instinct comes from but it feels right so she does it, yelling at Malfoy to tell her what he’s done to Harry and her brother. She doesn’t know any spells yet but she knows from experience that _something_ will happen if she’s mad enough.

Malfoy spins around to face her in complete bewilderment, looking like she scared him out of his skin, and she almost smirks at his expression but she’s still too angry to do anything but glare. Infuriatingly, Malfoy relaxes after a moment, lazily asking Ginny if she’s decided to betray the Weasels and be in the royal Slytherin House. Her blood boils as he goes on to say that sure, her family are blood traitors, but Slytherin has never turned away a pureblood before. Even a poorly dressed one.

At that, Ginny starts to tremble with fury, and she can feel the magic building up within her, looking for an outlet. She clutches her wand tighter, still aimed at Malfoy, and that seems to be all it takes for sparks to shoot out of her wand into Malfoy’s smug face. Malfoy swears, and ducks, but she relishes the look of fear that flashes across his face before he hides his head in his arms. His two bodyguards stand up at Malfoy’s shout to _do_ something, but uncertain and fearful, they just cower when Ginny points her wand at them too.

Emotions bubbling up inside her, Ginny turns and flees all the way down the train and back to the compartment she shared with Hermione, her wand shooting sparks the whole way, and it doesn’t stop until she drops her wand on the bench and sits down to catch her breath.

◊ ◊ ◊

As Headmaster Dumbledore makes his speech before the feast, Draco scans the Great Hall for Potter, but the bespectacled git isn’t anywhere to be found, nor is the orange-haired Weasel he’s so fond of, and he wonders where they could possibly be if the littlest Weasley felt the need to confront him so angrily on the train. All of the Gryffindors seem to be on edge, glancing around every so often, none more so than the mudblood Granger, whose hair is frizzier than ever. Draco hopes something bad happened to them.

He’s still looking at the entrance to the front hall curiously when the sorting starts. Draco doesn’t pay much attention to the proceeds but claps dutifully whenever a first-year gets sorted into Slytherin. It reminds him of how proud he was to have been sorted into Slytherin without a moment’s hesitation, the Sorting Hat barely having brushed his brow before announcing his allegiance. He wrote to father about it, and he remembers the bland letter he received in return, a whole week later, short and impersonal. ‘I’m not surprised,’ it read simply. ‘You are a Malfoy after all.’ Draco redoubled his efforts to live up to the Malfoy name after that, knowing his father was proud already, but to fall short of expectations would make him a disappointment, and bring shame to the family. He vowed to be the best at every thing he ever did.

Draco snaps out of his reverie when he hears Professor Mcgonagall call for “Weasley, Ginevra,” and even as he smirks with the rest of the Slytherins at her full name, for a moment he feels something else, some longing he can’t put his finger on. The hat stays on her head for about ten seconds, and he can see the red-haired girl with her eyes closed, seeming to wish really hard, and he can’t help but hold his breath with her. The moment the hat announces “Gryffindor!” in its booming voice, Draco lets out his breath in a huff, slumping slightly in his chair. He doesn’t quite know why he was hoping for it to say “Slytherin.”

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny can’t stop grinning upon hearing she’s a Gryffindor. The hat worried her for what seemed like forever, mulling over her options, saying how her loyalty was akin to a Hufflepuff’s, and her cunning best fit for Ravenclaw. “But the real question,” the hat said, “is whether you could thrive with the Slytherins.” A flash of fear went through her at the prospect—to be in the House that reviles her family and is known for their support of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named—but then Ginny sat up straighter. If the hat put her in Slytherin, Ginny wouldn’t let anyone see her fear. The hat seemed to approve of her courage and her reward was her family’s House.

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco doesn’t see the fiery-haired girl for a few weeks, seeing as she’s a first-year Gryffindor and he’s a second-year Slytherin, but when Potter and his two annoying friends are caught red-handed at the scene of Mrs. Norris’s attack, he can’t help flitting his eyes around the crowd for her. She’s nowhere to be seen.

The words on the wall are written in blood and it’s clear from the look on Potter’s face that he isn’t the culprit. Draco feels fear creep under his skin, but _a Malfoy never shows weakness_ , so he sneers as he reads the message aloud, adding an insult just to rile the Gryffindors up more: “You’ll be next, mudbloods.”

Besides, the Weaselette isn’t even a mudblood.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny is shaking in the girl’s bathroom, staring at the blood on her hands. She’s too afraid to tell her brothers. The water washes the evidence down the drain but she can still feel the congealing blood on her fingers, the wet stickiness on her palms. She tries desperately not to think about whose blood it could be.

Untucking her diary from her arm, she opens it hurriedly, scribbling almost illegibly as she begs Tom for answers. She’s only half-joking when she hopes that the blood is from that blonde git in Slytherin.

◊ ◊ ◊

He’s in the Great Hall when he notices her again. Draco is eating his dinner politely, _like a Malfoy should_ , cutting his meats gracefully and dabbing his mouth with his napkin every few bites, and in contrast with Greg and Vince, who are on the verge of a food fight, he looks all the more refined. As he glances up from their antics, he sees a flash of bright red hair, and as it’s too long to be any of the other Weasels, it immediately grabs his attention. Putting down his fork and knife, Draco peers over the heads of students, trying to catch a glimpse of the blood traitor without anyone noticing. It’s not for any particular reason—he’s just morbidly curious—but at the sight of her ashen, drawn face, Draco becomes uneasy. For the girl that attacked him without even knowing how to wield a wand, this image seems bizarre. She’s a Gryffindor—what could make her so afraid?

Draco shakes his head, and returns to his food. Whatever it is, Draco doesn’t care. She probably just can’t handle the coursework. Or control her magic. Blood traitors tend to be bad at that. After all, _control is the greatest tool of success_. Every Malfoy knows that.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny finds comfort only in Tom’s sound advice. She feels like they are close friends now, even though Tom hasn’t been at Hogwarts for a long time. But something feels wrong; Tom is lying to her. She doesn’t know why or how she knows, but something is gnawing at the pit of her stomach and she doesn’t understand why Tom won’t explain what’s happening to her. She’s losing time, waking up with blood on her hands, and she wants it to stop. Tom keeps pressuring her to understand him, but every memory she sees just scares her more.

She’s in the first floor girl’s lavatory, listening to Moaning Myrtle wailing, and she can’t take it anymore. She hurls Tom’s diary at the offending ghost, and her magic flares up in her again, even without holding her wand, and the sinks all crack, water spurting forth. She flees before Myrtle can berate her.

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco decides that now is the perfect time to get revenge on her for her little stunt on the train, because _a Malfoy never cowers_ , and that is something his father will definitely never hear about. Plus, Draco loves any excuse to humiliate Potter.

He waits until Vince and Greg are thoroughly involved in their stacks of pancakes before taking out a piece of parchment and quill. Casting a look around to ensure no one is watching him, Draco swiftly pens the Valentine, silently praising the fool Lockhart for providing the dwarf serenaders. On his way out of the hall, he walks past the dwarves, and upon finding the surliest-looking one, he gives it brief instructions and several sickles.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny misses Tom’s friendship immediately, but when she checked the bathroom soon after her rash decision, his diary was gone. Ginny feels worry spread through her chest. Who else could understand Tom the way she does? Who else could understand _her_?

It’s Valentine’s Day and the lurid pink decorations that Professor Lockhart put up seem to mock her current mood. She’s startled out of her thoughts though when she spots Harry trying to flee from a grumpy dwarf in the crowded hall. The dwarf rips Harry’s bag and sits on his knees, and Ginny feels outrage bubbling up inside her, and she steps forward to intervene on Harry’s behalf, but then she spots Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry’s pile of books and she freezes in horror. What if Tom tells Harry that she’s behind the Chamber of Secrets events? Tom is the only one she confided in about her confusion. She needs to get the diary back.

She barely hears the discordant serenade, but from everyone’s laughter, it must be humiliating. Ginny can’t tear her eyes off the diary. So when a certain blonde prat picks it up and starts taunting Potter, she watches the exchange with wide, attentive eyes, knowing that she can’t risk stepping in now.

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco is delighted with how things turn out. Just as he expressly requested, the dwarf waited until Harry was in a crowded area to tackle him and serenade him. Draco despises Lockhart of course, but he would never have achieved this level of humiliation for his nemesis if not for the idiot. And when Draco catches sight of a diary amongst Potter’s personals, he wastes no time in snatching it up. He can’t believe his luck. Taunting Potter has quickly become his favorite pastime. But when the Prat-Who-Lived manages to disarm him of the book (not even an _accio_ —that’s the _proper_ spell to use; Potter will _never_ be an accomplished wizard if he carries on like that), Draco turns to his second-favorite activity this year: taunting the Weaselette. By the way she flees when he implicates her in the Valentine, Draco knows he’s hit a sore spot. Because _a Malfoy knows everything about his enemies_.

◊ ◊ ◊

Once Ginny steals back the diary, Tom listens patiently as she rants and raves about the biggest arsehole in history, that pompous blonde git, that Draco-bloody-Malfoy, and she doesn’t even care that she’s swearing because if Ron can do it, so can she. But as Tom relates to her struggles, Ginny starts to feel foolish; Tom went through far more hardships than she. And so Ginny writes eagerly, ‘I want to help you, Tom. How can I help?’

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco’s interest spikes as he watches the Weaselette, jumpy and pale, timidly approach Potter and the other Weasel. Potter, admittedly sharper than the ginger idiot (though not by much), immediately gives her his full attention, aware that something is wrong. Then another of the Weasel spawn blunders in and scares her off, the prefect one, and Draco rolls his eyes at their stupidity. Draco squints at the Weaselette’s retreating form as his suspicion sets in.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny feels like she’s disapparating every few steps, as she can’t remember how she gets from one place to another. She’s in the front hall, then she’s in another corridor, then she’s on a moving staircase. She clutches Tom’s diary to her chest even though she wants to throw it away from her, because she isn’t in full control of her limbs anymore. The next time she feels like she disapparates, she looks up to see white-blonde hair and a sneer, and she knows she only has so much time to get rid of him before she won’t know what happened.

◊ ◊ ◊

Draco followed her, only because she was acting practically drunk, stumbling around the halls, pausing every so often and looking around like she didn’t know where she was. Now, she’s finally seen him because he’s blocked her way to the courtyard. She’s clutching a thin book to her chest. Draco’s face splits into a grin when he recognizes it as Harry’s diary.

“Stole that from Potter, did you?” he sneers. “Want to see if he’s written anything about you? I can save you the trouble: he doesn’t like you.”

“Sod off, Malfoy,” she grits out between trembling teeth. She tries to sidestep him, but Draco isn’t finished so he moves to block her path again.

“Sure you should be wandering the castle at night? I don’t think the heir of Slytherin likes blood traitors very much.” Draco gives her a disgusted look, because he hates how much that sounded like a warning. _A Malfoy never warns his enemies._

“Get out of my way, or I’ll hex you,” she says, but now her trembling is gone. She looks calm, and instead of glaring, she just looks at him with a curled lip. Even though she’s shorter than him she seems to be looking down at him. It reminds Draco of his father, and he bristles.

“Hex me?” he growls. “I’m a _pureblood_ , you filthy little—”

But Draco is cut off by the girl flicking her wand and throwing him backwards without even uttering a spell. By the time he picks himself up off the ground, she’s gone, and Draco begins to trudge down to the dungeons, trying to think of any way to avenge his wounded pride.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny feels very, very cold. Her robes are too thin to provide any warmth, and the wet floor does little to help the situation. She falls to her knees, feeling weaker than she’s ever felt. As Tom Riddle steps out of the pages of the diary, she tilts to the side, and with a rush of dread, she lies still on the ground. The last thing she hears is Tom’s mocking laughter.

◊ ◊ ◊

When Draco hears that a girl has been taken into the Chamber of Secrets, he hopes it’s Granger, even though she’s already been paralyzed, because wouldn’t classes be so much nicer without the bushy-haired know-it-all spouting perfect answers in her annoyingly stuck-up voice? If only one mudblood is killed this year, he just wishes it’s her.

But Pansy comes into the Slytherin common room, laughing as she tells Millicent that it’s the Weasley girl that got taken, and Draco sits up straighter. _A Malfoy relishes the destruction of his enemies_. Draco’s stomach feels hollow, even though he just ate dinner. _A Malfoy never takes mercy on his enemies_. He tries to ignore the twisting in his gut. _A Malfoy never helps his enemies_.

Draco slips out of the Slytherin dorms unnoticed, telling himself he just wants to see, even though he hasn’t the first clue where to go.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny wakes to find Harry holding a bloody sword next to a mutilated Basilisk corpse. She wants to be strong, but suddenly she’s sobbing uncontrollably, trying desperately to explain to Harry that she didn’t mean to do it, that she was tricked. Then Harry holds up the diary, which has a large hole in the center, and Ginny just cries harder because she’s so relieved it’s over.

◊ ◊ ◊

It’s been hours and all Draco has found is the writing on the wall that says ‘Her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever.’ He tries to smirk—this is what he wants, isn’t it?—but it feels wrong on his face. It isn’t until he’s about to give up, feeling slightly sick, that he hears the voice of Gilderoy Lockhart exclaiming, “Is this where you live? What a grand place! Though, I dare say your basement could use some remodeling.”

“Shut up, will you?” another voice grunts, and Draco immediately recognizes the angry Weasel that always hangs around Potter, fondly recalling the events of earlier in the year when the idiot hexed himself to vomit up slugs. Rounding a corner, Draco catches sight of the ginger ushering a very bemused Lockhart towards the hospital wing. And, to Draco’s surprise, the whole Weasley clan is not too far ahead of them, Ginny included. She looks shaken and tears are still streaming down her face but even as she clutches her mother’s hand, Draco sees a fierceness in her face that makes him pleased that she didn’t die that day.

◊ ◊ ◊

Ginny feels worn out and all she wants to do is go home, drink some hot chocolate, and go to sleep. But just as she’s leaving with her family, she glances back and is surprised to see Draco Malfoy, standing at the other end of the hallway, a small smile on his face. But then he turns and is gone, and Ginny heads home, trying hard to think of nothing at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment to let me know what you think :)


End file.
